As the year turned and winter began in earnest.
Count Grey, the chief aide who had overseen the administrative affairs of the imperial palace through two emperors since the previous emperor, requested an extended leave from the emperor for the first time in a very long while.
“Hoho. For you to be the one to request leave first. So, where do you intend to go?”
“These old bones seem to creak, unable to endure the cold northern wind. I was thinking of going to a resort in the warm south to enjoy the hot springs and rest thoroughly.”
“Keh keh, aye. And so you should. Count Grey is my most loyal subject. I wish to work with you for a long time yet, so go enjoy the warm southern climate to your heart’s content and rest well.”
“Your grace is immeasurable, Your Majesty.”
“Rest well, and return when the weather clears. Do not think of coming back to work before your leave is over.”
The emperor readily approved his leave and offered generous words of blessing.
Count Grey bowed his head respectfully and expressed his gratitude.
But the look in his eyes as he left the emperor’s office was not that of a man about to go on vacation.
A workaholic whom even the Crown Prince would click his tongue at, and the very embodiment of self-discipline, Count Grey had never had any intention of enjoying the warm southern climate.
Concealing his identity and purpose thoroughly, he boarded a carriage alone, heading secretly for the Kingdom of Sterling.
#
About ten days later.
Count Grey, having pulled a dusty traveler’s cloak deep over his head, arrived at the capital of the Kingdom of Sterling.
After taking a room at a quiet, secluded inn slightly removed from the city center, he immediately went out into the streets and began to gauge the atmosphere of the place.
‘The Kingdom of Sterling.’
Once merely a small, quiet minor kingdom in a corner of the southern continent, the capital’s scenery was now quite different from before.
Since coming under the Empire’s rule, it had exported tremendous quantities of specialties and seafood to the north and the Imperial family, causing the city’s scale to expand explosively.
Splendid carriages paraded down the streets, and the mansions of merchant conglomerates and nobles looked as luxurious and wealthy as those in the Empire’s capital.
But Count Grey quickly grasped that it had only grown on the outside, while its insides were rotten and decayed.
‘…Where the light is strong, the shadows grow deep.’
As he moved from the splendid main road into the back alleys, the lives of the commoners reflected in Count Grey’s eyes were horrific.
While nobles and great merchants monopolized wealth, the commoners were instead being exploited far more cruelly than before to bear the burden of the Empire’s tribute and the nobles’ luxuries.
“Hey, old man. Those are some fine boots you’re wearing? Hand over all your money and quietly get lost.”
As Count Grey was passing through the back alley of the pleasure quarter, a group of vicious thugs wielding knives and clubs blocked his path.
They saw an elderly traveler walking alone as easy prey.
Shhk-!
“Kuhk?!”
“Urk!”
Instead of answering, Count Grey drew his sword and swung without a word.
The thin, sharp blade at his waist flashed but three times, and the thugs crumpled, spraying blood from their throats and hearts before they could even scream properly.
The Empire’s foremost chief aide was no mere desk-bound civil official.
Having cut down the entire group in one breath, the count wiped the blood from his sword carelessly on the hem of a thug’s clothes and clicked his tongue.
“For public order in the heart of the capital to be in such a state. It has rotted through and through.”
Leaving the corpses behind, he headed for a tavern frequented by the Sterling royal household’s attendants to properly dig for information.
A few hefty Imperial gold coins and rounds of strong liquor easily loosened the attendants’ tongues.
“Oh my, are you speaking of His Highness Ian? I know all about him.”
One slightly intoxicated royal attendant cackled and began to talk.
“Wasn’t he originally a bastard, a good-for-nothing who couldn’t even be acknowledged by the royal family for the longest time? But then the Empire demanded a hostage, so His Majesty hastily recognized him as a prince and threw him to the Empire like a piece of luggage. Ptooey, the royal lot dealing in bloodlines.”
Count Grey quietly tilted his cup and fell into thought.
‘…Prince Ian. They hastily manufactured a prince from a discarded bastard to send as a hostage.’
It matched perfectly with the scenario that the Emperor and Count Gross had predicted.
If he had stopped his investigation here and returned to the Empire, he too could have enjoyed a very carefree vacation.
But the veteran aide’s intuition, honed over a lifetime of suspicion and information warfare, was still ringing with an uneasy warning.
‘No. One thing remains. The name he left on the academy valedictorian certificate. Harper.’
Not abandoning his suspicions, Count Grey left the capital at dawn the next day and inquired his way to the Harper family’s territory.
#
The Harper Barony, arrived at after traveling for several days.
It was not far from the capital, but because they were a minor noble family with few who knew of them, he had gone in entirely the wrong direction, causing a delay that made the journey take four days to reach the Harper Barony.
“So this is the place. But… is this really a territory? What ruin is this…”
But what greeted Count Grey there was not a peaceful territory, but a ghost town completely devastated and abandoned.
Houses were burned or collapsed, and there was no trace of human warmth, as if a plague had swept through.
“What in the world happened here? How did the territory come to be in such a state?”
When the count grabbed an old villager in shabby clothes passing nearby and asked, the old man answered trembling with fear.
“…One day, out of nowhere, Baron Harper abandoned the management of the territory and fled to the capital with his household. And then the vicious Count Hodeki took over the territory for a pittance… He extorted taxes mercilessly and bound all the territory’s people in chains to sell as slaves. That is why the village is in this state.”
Hearing the old villager’s words, Count Grey let out a hollow sigh.
‘…So he truly was a bastard born of a countryside baronial house that had fallen into ruin as if destroyed.’
Before being dragged off as a hostage to the Empire, Ian must have worked like mad at the academy to claim the top spot, desperate to be acknowledged somehow.
But in the end, his mother’s house collapsed into ruin, and he himself was dragged off to his death.
Every circumstance fit perfectly.
‘I was too sensitive. I should end my suspicions here and go back.’
It was the very moment Count Grey turned to head back toward his carriage.
Dudududu-
Kicking up a cloud of dust, a fully armed group of horsemen appeared noisily and without warning.
They were an imperial-style escort in expensive armor, qualitatively different from Sterling’s paltry knights.
Since Count Grey, huddled in an old cloak beside his carriage, neither stepped aside nor bowed his head, the captain of the escort shouted arrogantly from horseback.
“Hey, you old man there! It is the passage of Count Hodeki, noble of the Empire! Kneel and knock your head on the ground at once, or I will cut off your head on the spot!”
Though it was an overbearing threat, a sly smile spread across Count Grey’s lips beneath his cloak.
Count Hodeki, the very one who had cruelly trampled the Harper territory, had appeared before him of his own accord.
“You will cut off my head? This body?”
Count Grey let out a short laugh and threw off the cloak draped behind him.
And from his breast, he took out a golden, gleaming imperial seal engraved with the symbol of the Emperor and thrust it before the captain’s eyes.
“…!!”
“T-the imperial seal?”
The face of the haughty captain turned deathly pale in an instant.
“I am Count Grey, Chief Aide to the Imperial Household. I happened to have something to ask your master; what good timing. You had best cooperate quietly.”
The appearance of the Emperor’s closest confidant, a powerful figure whom a mere imperial count would not dare to look upon.
Count Grey expected Hodeki to verify the seal and immediately tumble out of his carriage to prostrate himself on the ground, trembling like an aspen tree.
But-
“Oh! Is this not Count Grey, Your Excellency! To meet such a noble person in such a humble place is truly an immense honor for this Hodeki!”
Count Hodeki’s reaction, hastily alighting from his carriage, was completely beyond Count Grey’s expectations.
Far from turning pale with panic and terror, Count Hodeki wore an extremely bright and delighted smile, as if he had met a long-awaited savior, and ran over to bow deeply.
“…?”
It was not a forced smile of sycophancy to save his life.
He looked genuinely glad, with an expression of utter conviction about something.
Facing that bizarre reaction, Count Grey swallowed his bewilderment internally and narrowed his eyes.
‘Why in the world is this man acting this way?’